Annual Report 2006-08

This report covers a longer than usual period of approximately 18 months (from November 2006 to May 2008).

During this period the original office inspection programme was completed with an inspection of 21 district offices (see Annex A), 3 thematic reports (see Annex B) and the first 2 of the new Area Inspections (see Annex C).

Twenty one race themed office reports were published. Overall, these inspections, which included an examination of a statistically relevant sample of individual cases, showed high compliance with policy.

The two wider focused Area Inspections of Dumfries and Galloway and Grampian, as expected, highlighted the difficult task offices had in complying with the Disclosure requirements following the decisions of the Privy Council in the cases of Holland and Sinclair. Perhaps not surprisingly Disclosure was in both Areas made on occasion later than desirable. Compliance with the Lord Advocate's guidelines on bail in both locations was high. In Grampian good feedback was obtained in the areas of Oil, Gas and Fishery prosecutions and associated death investigation. These are particularly high risk activities for the prosecution service.